Wandering

A Forgotten Star

Entry #9

1st of July, 22:37

Beach on the eastern shoreline of Lake Vale

912m ASL

Temperature 12º C, Wind Speed 1 m/s NE

There was a sphere of calm blue light glowing in the water.

I stared dumbfounded at it for a moment, unsure what to think or do. I could feelsomething from Elytra – as if she was quivering, barely holding herself in from doing...

What?

I shook my head and hunched down to get a closer look. By some odd luck, it had landed right on top of my dishes; thus, I didn't need to risk touching it to bring it out of the water, instead simply lifting it up along with one of the stove pots.

As soon as I gripped it, I could feel something was off. It was light, much too light – as if there wasn't anything inside it at all – and yet, I could clearly see the water sploshing around before my eyes, totally oblivious of its apparent weightlessness.

I turned my eyes inward for a moment. Elytra wasvibrating, and I could feel the little patch of black on my neck whirling like a tornado. Trying not to think of an angry mutated tumor too much, I reached out to her. “Elytra.” As my presence drew closer to hers, the quivering died down, and I felt a massive surge of relief – and fear – from her. “Do you have any idea what this is?”

In a moment she was at my side, her genie-like body hanging in the air, emerald eyes wide and staring into the light. “I don't have the faintest idea,” she breathed, moaning slightly as she inched her nose closer and closer to the sphere. “I don't know anything about it, but...”

I shifted my eyes to look at my companion for a moment. She was losing control completely – that I could easily sense from the state of her mind – and I had no idea what to do about it, or why. Except for the obvious fact that this blue shining orb-thingy had something to do with it.

“It calls to me...”

For a moment, her voice became split in twain just like Chrysalis', and out of sheer panic I reached out with my arm to push her away from the orb. Her eyes were almost down in the shallow waters of the pot it lay in, however, and I couldn't avoid getting my hand wet in the process. Wet, and...

I briefly felt my finger touch something solid, and the entire world went white.

No, not white. Bright, shining silvery gray, fading, darkening, moving in ripples like–

MARTIN!

For the second time that day I drew myself out of a reverie with a deep, hulking breath; though nowhere as frantic as it had been last time. My face was dripping – I'd been down in the water! – stripes of my long hair had come loose from my normally well-kept ponytail, and hung like wet snakes across my cheeks. However, despite the sad state of my eyesight at the moment I could easily tell that there was an obvious absence of blue light shining in my face. What had happened to the orb?

Martin! Can you hear me?

I drew another breath, which immediately had me stuck in a fit of coughing to get the water out of my throat. My hands were unsteady, but I managed to wipe my eyes clear fairly well. I blinked a few times, and finally managed to stop coughing, drawing another deep breath as I tried to settle down a bit.

“Blod och jävla skalperad åsneröv...”

I opened my eyes again, and once again found myself completely stumped.

There was no water in the pot. All that remained inside the aluminum pot was the object that had been the source of all this grief to begin with: a clear blue orb, a tiny speck of light shining at its heart like a distant star. Shimmering spots of bright and dark played across the sphere's insides, like the sun shining through leaves in the wind.

At least it seemed to have lost its weightlessness, since I could clearly feel it rolling gently as I moved the pot around. “Huh,” was all I managed to get out of my mouth. I felt something wet against my legs, and looked down; only now did I realize that my entire right arm was dripping with water, the bamboo cloth and layers of polyester soaked all the way through to the skin.

It pulled you in, Martin.

I froze, my eyes stuck staring at the idle droplets running down my arm one by one.

When you touched it, it pulled you in, and lit up even brighter. It must have stopped shining when you came back up – I had to go inside for you to hear me.

It took me several seconds to make myself move, break free of the sudden fear that hadgripped my stomach like a vise. Slowly, I crouched down again and placed the pot in the sand, my eyes fixed on the still-glowing orb.

What in hell's name could this thing be?

-/-/-/

It was roughly half an hour later that I shook Chrysalis out of her sleep to ask her the same question. The changeling queen was barely conscious – a heavy sleeper if I ever saw one – but when the object in question was brought before her, she jolted back to full awareness in the blink of an eye. “Where did you get this,” she whispered softly. Her emerald eyes were completely glued to the orb, and her ears were pointing skyward. She hadn't seen any of what we had – since she'd been asleep she obviously hadn't had the chance to use her mind-link to Elytra, and I wasn't even sure how that worked through the melding and all – she hadn't seen anything, and yet it seemed she was...

Afraid.

It couldn't be clearer that she knew something we didn't, so I tried to pry what I could out of her before spilling my own beans. “Do you know anything about this? I can't make heads or tails of it, and neither can Elytra.” I put my hand on her shoulder, to try and grab her attention away from the sphere for a bit. “Chrysalis, what is this thing?”

For a short, short moment she flicked her gaze to looked at me, and I saw her fear clear as day. I didn't even need to send any feelers into Elytra's senses to recognize the signs on her face, that look in her eyes. Queen Chrysalis was very, very afraid – and she didn't know how to handle that emotion at all.

So with my best interests at heart – and hers, at the end of it – I decided to grab the tiller and try to steer her mind into somewhat more familiar waters. Or, failing that, at least get what I could out of her.

I grabbed her at the shoulders with both hands – a bit more forcefully this time – and thrust my head at her, trying to break her off from just staring mindlessly at the orb. “Chrysalis,” I said once more, my voice as calm and methodical as I could make in spite of my impatience. “Focus. What is this thing? What do you know about it?”

As I zoned her gaze away from the orb, she turned her head to the side, shame clear on her face. “I...” She sighed, and took a few quick steps away from me and the orb, shaking her head. “Not much, really. It's a very old memory, and things that are passed through so many individual lines...” She gave me a hard, measuring look. “There's a reason why the Mercurial Archives are so precious, after all. Everything else aside, they are by far the oldest clear memories we have – the rest are either just bits and pieces, or jumbled by death and chaos to the point where nothing in them make much sense at all.”

By now, she had me listening attentively. Elytra had mentioned that the memory she'd shown me before was part of something called the Mercurial Archives, but she'd never really explained the term. If there was more of that lying around...

Chrysalis didn't let my thoughts stray for long, however. “Since the beginning of time, ponies have struggled to define the nature of magic. Its many, ever-changing natures, rather – that is why, I suppose, we've always had so much trouble succeeding. However, in the ancient times before the founding of Equestria, and for several centuries of its early existence, the mages would define its constituents as four separate elements: The Elements of Magic.”

I broke in – with many years of dealing in literature and other media of the more fantastically kind, I was pretty sure I had this one down pat. “Let me guess. Water, Earth, Wind and Fire?”

My confident smile dissolved, however, when Chrysalis shook her head. “Not quite, Hunter. Those natural elements have always been secondary to the practitioners of magic. No, the four elements of magic are Change, Love, Pride and Wrath. These four great pillars of the mind were what mages of all races sought to achieve. Most could only master one of them, but a very select few were able to delve deeper into their abilities and call upon several at a time.”

“These few grand masters of magic were known as Alchemists, and when they worked together to bring all the four elements of magic together, they worked objects of great wonder into the world.”

I raised a hand to interrupt. “Hold on. Alchemists? I thought they were the kind of guys who made potions and shit, trying to make gold from lead, or an elixir of life from...” I never managed to finish that line, though. The puzzle was still all too much in pieces, yet I had managed to spot its presence. Something was very wrong here, and it wasn't just the weird links between my mythology and this place's ancient history.

Chrysalis sighed and shook her head, apparently letting my slip slide. She probably had enough on her mind as it was. “Ironically that is all that remains of alchemy today, and the only bit of its knowledge that has survived. We do not practice it – the effects one can produce with the primitive level of mastery possible there are nothing we have any use of – but we know that some of the other races do still. They are persecuted for this, because it does not fit in. Not anymore.”

She turned her back to me, gazing into the distance as she went on. “I have no memories of any details, but in ancient times there was a...conflict, with the ponies facing a creature, or a force, named Discord. There were two great Alchemists among the ponies at that time, the princesses Luna and Celestia – this is all hindsight, of course, but we're fairly certain they were instrumental in that struggle – who lead the ponies against Discord and claimed victory. Yet when the field of battle cleared...”

She shook her head again, and turned to face me. “This is mostly speculation, of course, but for it all to have been coincidence seems a rather far-fetched notion. We know virtually nothing first-hand from the ponies' war on Discord, and what we know of the conflict itself is bungled and mashed into so many legends and old pony tales that half of them seem to contradict each other on every point, and the other half tell us almost nothing at all. What we know for fact, is that before the emergence of Discord, at least, alchemy was widely practiced by all mages in the known world. After, however...”

Her horn lit up, and its fire drew four familiar shapes in the air. I could recognize the marks normally used to denotemale andfemale in there, and then there was one more like thefemale one except it had a little half-circle on top of it; lastly there was some sort of twisted shape vaguely resembling the number 4, though I couldn't make heads or tails out of that one.

Before I could draw any further conclusions there, however, two more shapes appeared: a large shining orb, and a crescent moon, which probably meant that the first one was supposed to be the sun. It was a bit hard to tell when everything was the same green as Chrysalis' eyes, but the symbolism was clear enough.

The four symbols – I guessed they were supposed to represent the elements – began swirling around the sun and moon, soon whirling too fast for me to see other than as a circle of green fire. When the bright band of flames finally slowed down enough for me to recognize any shapes in it, they had changed. Changed, and multiplied. Six distinct shapes, none familiar, now rotated around the two celestial bodies, and the old elements were nowhere to be seen. The sun and moon shone ever brighter than before, and seemed connected to the new symbols somehow.

Naturally, none of this meant to me by itself, so I shifted my stare onto Chrysalis, demanding an explanation.

“After that conflict, magic was different. Nothing seemed to work the same way it did before, and many spells failed without anypony knowing why. The Elements of Magic were gone and forgotten, buried in the chaos of the long war; in their place were the six Elements of Harmony, and their two eternal protectors. Records mention little of Luna and Celestia's heritage, or their status before the war, but given their proficiency in alchemy it seems unlikely they were candidates for the crown. After, however, the throne of Equestria was theirs and theirs alone, and with their newfound immortality they weren't likely to be ousted from it any time soon.”

Immortality. That word rung in my ears with a strange, compelling sound, and suddenly dreams of old and wild theories were beginning to live their own lives in my head. I could sense Elytra's confusion at my reaction, but I massaged my temples, a disbelieving grimace on my face, before asking Chrysalis to continue.

“The Elements of Harmony – Loyalty, Honesty, Kindness, Generosity, Laughter and Leadership. Over centuries to come, Celestia and Luna ingrained these into the civilization of ponykind, replacing all notion of the old magic with the new. I'm skipping a great number of things, but this isn't a history lesson – suffice it to say that to this day, Luna and Celestia still reign in Canterlot.” For a brief moment, fury burned in the queen's eyes as she drew upon her memories. “I was able to defeat them both, them and their Elements of Harmony, but when I thought I finally had everything in my grasp...”

She shifted her eyes back to the orb, still lying in the pot it had landed in. “I had my suspicions, I must say, but I never expected this. That Alchemy itself, in however limited form, survived, should have been an obvious sign that the old Elements weren't dead or gone. What Princess Cadence did yesterday – harnessing the power of Love itself to repel every last changeling from Canterlot – should really have got me thinking more, but...”

I saw her frown, and I felt obliged to reply. “Don't sweat it. Hell knows you've had enough things to think about. Me, for one.”

She gave me a thankful smile, and shook her head. “That I have. Still, it is no excuse. I should have been more prepared. Now, I am the only one who remembers – and I cannot for all the love in the world figure out what is going on here.”

She cleared her throat, before walking up to me and settling a hoof just above the orb. “This object is a product of alchemy, without doubt.  A product, as well as a source of magic. It is immensely powerful, and overly complex yet entirely simple at the same time. That is about as much as I can sense from it...”

Her eyebrows curved down and she gave me a decidedly angry stare. The game was up. “And that is everything we will know until you tell meeverything about how you came by this object. Everything, Martin. Every single detail,every, last, word.”

It was late into the small hours of the night before I managed to get away from her interrogation; heavens know, she was thorough. I had to rack my brain both once and twice to remember in detail the strange conversation between the shadowy stallion and the disembodied voice, and Elytra refused to help me; she'd gone silent not far into the whole ordeal, and if my guess wasn't entirely off she had likely fallen asleep somehow, sequestered in her own little corner of our shared mind.

I gave every detail and every word I could remember, and when Chrysalis thought I was holding something back she stared at me again with those flaring eyes and had me go through it all again. She took everything she wanted, and gave nothing back; when I asked her what she thought, all she ever said was, “We will speak again come morning, Hunter,” and nothing more. The times she didn't just ignore my protests completely and barrel away with another set of questions, that was.

I left the mysterious orb lying there in its pot, and didn't even bother gathering up the rest of the stove at all – they were all lying in a wet heap at the foot of my little corner of the camp – before rumbling my way over to my things to tuck myself in for the night. It was fairly dark, but there was a hint of sunlight showing in the far northeast. Still, it was far better than I'd had so far, and I briefly considered sleeping without the blindfold on before deciding against it.

As I wriggled myself down into my sleeping bag and started shedding some of my extra layers, I heard Elytra's voice mumbling something inaudible inside my head. I could only stare in disbelief for a few seconds, before I cursed loudly and tied my blindfold in anger. I had always had trouble sleeping – lack of melatonin in my body, most likely – but having to endure a sleeptalking changeling inside my head was, I suspected, going to take my insomnia to a whole new level of misery.

As per usual, however, thinking about it would only incite mister Murphy to enforce his law even stricter on my already sorry ass. With a sour grimace on my face, I bunked down and buried myself in the polyester sheets, trying my best to ignore Elytra's sporadic mumbling as I sought to drift off into sleep.

But if Murphy himself usually only bothers you if you're thinking about him, his loyal underlings at the meteorology department has never had any such qualms. More importantly, they very much enjoy tormenting the poor souls who are completely unprepared for whatever shit they can toss at them any given day.

And naturally, all of this chaos had made me completely forget any sane hiker's first tenet.

Never, ever,ever trust the fucking weather.